Lyrl's recent activity
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Comment on What’s something that didn’t work for you? in ~talk
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Comment on Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars in ~transport
Lyrl Link ParentAll-electric trains are a thing, sure. For some routes they are the best option. For routes that extends significantly beyond where wire has been built, diesel engines fill that gap.All-electric trains are a thing, sure. For some routes they are the best option. For routes that extends significantly beyond where wire has been built, diesel engines fill that gap.
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Comment on Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars in ~transport
Lyrl Link ParentWhat was the weather like the weeks you borrowed the car? I got a Prius in October, and it got low 40s mpg all winter. Popped up to high 50s as soon as the temps were consistently above freezing....What was the weather like the weeks you borrowed the car? I got a Prius in October, and it got low 40s mpg all winter. Popped up to high 50s as soon as the temps were consistently above freezing.
Also, I believe tuning details on the hybrids make optimal driving styles for hybrid car fuel efficiency different than it is for cars with only ICE engines. Your expertise with the Civic might have been working against you with the Camry.
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Comment on Did wokeness leave us worse off? (gifted link) in ~society
Lyrl Link ParentIf we have to live in a society where a majority of people are assholes, I see limiting the analysis to labeling them assholes as self-defeating. They have critical mass: our attempts to shame...If we have to live in a society where a majority of people are assholes, I see limiting the analysis to labeling them assholes as self-defeating. They have critical mass: our attempts to shame them have insufficient power to change their behavior.
Evaluating what things have changed their behavior, and using that knowledge to strategize on how to systematically pull some of those levers to move our society towards a more comfortable place for ourselves, is a productive activity.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of April 27 in ~society
Lyrl Link ParentThe circumstance of people who are pro-death penalty mostly supporting methods likely to be horrific deaths, and the people who would prefer humane deaths mostly having a first choice of no death...The circumstance of people who are pro-death penalty mostly supporting methods likely to be horrific deaths, and the people who would prefer humane deaths mostly having a first choice of no death penalty, is a weird dynamic. Humane death methods don't get much advocacy or support because the people who prefer that are spending all their energy advocating against the death penalty.
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Comment on Almost half of EU’s busiest flight routes are ‘hard or impossible’ to book on trains in ~transport
Lyrl Link ParentIf government infrastructure planning was done sensibly, trains would be cheapest for medium-haul between-city passenger travel, and planes would be cheapest for long-haul passenger travel, or...If government infrastructure planning was done sensibly, trains would be cheapest for medium-haul between-city passenger travel, and planes would be cheapest for long-haul passenger travel, or routes where the geography made track impractical to lay.
Even with infrastructure that makes sense, planes are more economical for longer passenger routes. A train has maintenance needs for every point between the departing and arriving locations. The track has to be inspected, repaired, in the case of interchanges staffed, and as volume of passengers or types of cars changes upgraded. A plane has to maintain the plane itself and the airports, but the air in between requires no maintenance, and doesn't have to be upgraded to support a different type of plane.
The longer times on a train also increase cost, as more food and bathroom facilities have to be available, and for the longest routes passenger density declines because enough room has to be provided for sleeping.
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
Lyrl Link ParentSomeone with altruistic impulses is much less likely to become a billionaire in the first place. They would make a transition from generating additional wealth to maintaining or drawing down their...Someone with altruistic impulses is much less likely to become a billionaire in the first place. They would make a transition from generating additional wealth to maintaining or drawing down their assets well before reaching ten figure's worth of assets.
As R3qn65 brought up, there are a lot of not-evil billionaires. But the process of becoming a billionaire selects out the most sociable humans, and the end result is a concentration of personalities harmful to the general good that is many multiples of the rate of the general population.
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Comment on Falling demand for cardboard boxes — long a proxy for consumer spending — is raising concerns about the US economy in ~finance
Lyrl Link ParentI think the idea that sustainability is bad for economic metrics is a misunderstanding. If people were spending less and hoarding the savings under a mattress, that would be bad for the economy....I think the idea that sustainability is bad for economic metrics is a misunderstanding. If people were spending less and hoarding the savings under a mattress, that would be bad for the economy.
If people were spending less on gasoline and landfilling less stuff, and used the savings to enrich their lives in other ways - eating out more, going to theater, going to watch local bands, etc - that would be good for the economy by being a higher proportion of local spending and more long-term sustainable.
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Comment on Gemma needs help in ~comp
Lyrl Link ParentThanks for the elaboration, I agree with everything you wrote and it was helpful and interesting to have the additional context. I think over-anthropomorphizing is an issue even if AI experience...Thanks for the elaboration, I agree with everything you wrote and it was helpful and interesting to have the additional context. I think over-anthropomorphizing is an issue even if AI experience emotion, because their drivers (whether purely programmatic or influenced by some emotion or emotion-like experience) are alien to ours.
LLMs are designed and trained to "want" to please humans, but in a very superficial way - very much in the vein you pointed out about minimizing distress in humans not being the same as minimizing distressed language from humans, but they are only trained to minimize distressed language. They don't "want" to be friends in any sense of the word besides sycophancy, which seems to be severely damaging to a small percentage of humans (the AI psychosis cases), and likely to be more mildly-to-moderately harmful for a much larger percentage.
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Comment on EU hopes Hungarian election will bring end to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's blockades in ~society
Lyrl LinkI hadn't realized enough democratic structures were left in Hungary that Orban losing an election would be viewed as a serious possibility. Thanks for posting, that is positive to learn.I hadn't realized enough democratic structures were left in Hungary that Orban losing an election would be viewed as a serious possibility. Thanks for posting, that is positive to learn.
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Comment on Reddit will implement human verification to tag and combat bots in ~tech
Lyrl Link ParentIt's difficult to imagine a price point that is low enough to be widely accessible for one account, but high enough to discourage multi-account sophisticated SEO strategies. The amount of money...It's difficult to imagine a price point that is low enough to be widely accessible for one account, but high enough to discourage multi-account sophisticated SEO strategies. The amount of money that can be raked in by successfully making your brand widely known (bonus if with a positive connotation) is just so large, the motivation is strong to find an exploit. To a point, the exploits being difficult just drives up the value, because then there is less competition once you are inside.
But I hope someone figures it out and successfully implements a community without hidden corporate shills.
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Comment on Gemma needs help in ~comp
Lyrl Link ParentKind of related to emotional language, claims of consciousness are also being explored by LLM researchers....Kind of related to emotional language, claims of consciousness are also being explored by LLM researchers. https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/switching-off-ais-ability-to-lie-makes-it-more-likely-to-claim-its-conscious-eerie-study-finds
The OP article is considering actions as well:
Gemini’s viral exploits - dramatically admitting defeat, deleting codebases, uninstalling itself… - already show anecdotal signs of emotions driving behaviours.
Definitely not proof of emotions - this echos human behaviors in the training data - but it's not "just" emotional language.
The recentness of widespread acceptance that fish feel pain, or that human infants feel pain (anesthetic for circumcision was considered pointless), makes me wary of assuming LLMs cannot feel distress unless some unimaginable new type of evidence comes into existence. Especially if there is no cost to performance, programmers leaning towards training solutions that minimize distressed emotional language in internal processing seems reasonable given even a small chance there is experienced distress.
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Comment on Gemma needs help in ~comp
Lyrl Link ParentWhat would constitute evidence of emotions? What a model does and says is heavily suspect as evidence because the utility optimization profoundly affects them, but I am not sure any other evidence...What would constitute evidence of emotions? What a model does and says is heavily suspect as evidence because the utility optimization profoundly affects them, but I am not sure any other evidence lines could exist.
It seems reasonable to entertain bad evidence if there is no possibility of good evidence.
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Comment on Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs in ~humanities.languages
Lyrl LinkThere might be a symbiosis of people who get more into corporate BS and promote the workplace sense of purpose and team that go along with it, and people who care much less for social interactions...There might be a symbiosis of people who get more into corporate BS and promote the workplace sense of purpose and team that go along with it, and people who care much less for social interactions but are much better at the technical problem solving.
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Comment on Google’s AI overviews can scam you. Here’s how to stay safe. in ~tech
Lyrl Link ParentHumans are wired to support our community, particularly family and close friends. We all know parents have a strong (although not universal) tendency to hold irrationally positive views of their...Humans are wired to support our community, particularly family and close friends. We all know parents have a strong (although not universal) tendency to hold irrationally positive views of their children, and consider this a normal part of being human.
Scammers have found the social cues that trigger that "family illogic" circuit in many people. It can't be fought be logic, because it's not logical. It can be fought by cultivating the relationship between you and victim to meet whatever social need the victim is filling by their interactions with the scammer. Which is incredibly time consuming and emotionally draining, and often not practical, but just knowing the cause and a potential way out is a base on which to build.
At a higher level, better understanding of the social cues that make people susceptible to scams can inform policy that encourages community connections that trigger those cues, and fill the associated emotional needs, in a safe and positive way. We don't have great public policy examples yet, but supporting work to figure those out and implement them is a better reaction than victim-blaming people for, basically, being genetically human.
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Comment on Device that can extract 1,000 liters of clean water a day from desert air revealed by 2025 Nobel Prize winner in ~enviro
Lyrl Link ParentYes, yes it does. Local nighttime temperatures increase around windfarms, both increasing local average temperature and reducing day-night temperature swings. Generally considered to be worth the...There has to be some measureable decrease in the wind speed through the farm and does that have any downstream impacts on anything?
Yes, yes it does. Local nighttime temperatures increase around windfarms, both increasing local average temperature and reducing day-night temperature swings. Generally considered to be worth the tradeoff, but not by everyone, and details are still being researched.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830446X -
Comment on Breakthrough antibody discovery targets Epstein-Barr virus, which infects 95% of the world’s population in ~health
Lyrl Link ParentEBV is implicated in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) and neurological issues that are thought to be related like Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, which are hugely...EBV is implicated in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) and neurological issues that are thought to be related like Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, which are hugely debilitating and don't have any treatment other than support and coping strategies. (And symptoms largely overlap with Long Covid, which has similar issues.) Better understanding of what the virus does gives hope that understanding of how in some people it triggers neurological issues is close. And then maybe some effective treatment within my lifetime would be awesome.
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Comment on US Supreme Court strikes down Donald Trump's tariffs in ~society
Lyrl Link ParentMany of our deep drives are keyed towards staying in good graces with our in-group, because our far ancestors survived and reproduced more successfully by being in good group standing, even if the...This has reset my baseline understanding of what it means (in actuality) to be human. This isn’t saying that huge amounts of people are subhuman, it’s an admission that this is what humanity actually is, and a reminder that we’re not as sophisticated as we long pretended to be.
Many of our deep drives are keyed towards staying in good graces with our in-group, because our far ancestors survived and reproduced more successfully by being in good group standing, even if the group had objectively wrong positions, than by pursuing objective truth as individuals. Evolution selected against being able to apply our intelligence to things related to in-group identity.
I see so much talk of people holding illogical positions as being stupid, or due to a lack of education, and to me neither of those things seem to align with the divisions in our country. I believe if we don't address the real challenge of these in-group brain circuits that bypass our intelligence (or harness that intelligence for post-rationalization) and are immune to standard education, we aren't going to make any headway.
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Comment on Voyager Technologies CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved in ~space
Lyrl Link ParentThe hard working engineers at SpaceX are far from idiots. The owner of the company they work for has always been a charismatic rich idiot, that actually smart people sucked up to so he would...The hard working engineers at SpaceX are far from idiots. The owner of the company they work for has always been a charismatic rich idiot, that actually smart people sucked up to so he would provide capital for their business ideas, and use his charisma to get more capital from other rich people. Now, he has surrounded himself with yes men for so long that he deeply believes the sycophancy.
Being a charismatic figurehead providing capital to actually smart people worked for a long time, but as Elon has gotten in deeper thinking he is the smart one, his businesses have deteriorated. Twitter and Tesla are stagnant, and SpaceX is now saddled with covering the losses at Twitter and the Elon part of the AI bubble spending. It is not hubristic to watch the pattern of behavior and conclude Elon, and other billionaires who believe they are smart only because they surround themselves with sycophants to tell them that, are idiots.
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Comment on Hair loss open discussion in ~talk
Lyrl Link ParentSide comment on shedding: 50-100 scalp hairs a day is normal. Hair follicles grow a hair for a while, then pause and take a break (hair might shed here), then start over with a new hair (old hair...Side comment on shedding: 50-100 scalp hairs a day is normal. Hair follicles grow a hair for a while, then pause and take a break (hair might shed here), then start over with a new hair (old hair gets pushed out here if it didn't come out during the rest period).
Eyebrow hairs have a growth cycle of about six weeks and a rest period of around three to four months. So over a year, every single one of our eyebrow hairs sheds at least twice.
Scalp hairs typically grow for two to six years before resting. Shed scalp hairs are a normal part of the hair follicle behavior, with most people losing between 50 and 100 each day, and not by themselves indicative of any problems.
The age thinning is sad and real (I have long hair, and most of my braid length is pencil thin now), but is a result of hair follicles not growing new hairs after their rest cycle, not related to the normal cyclical shedding itself.
My husband has a similar experience, where it seems like my reduced stress from not listening to extended silence followed by great big gasps for air on repeat is the main change. He has commented that he used to have a headache all the time, and with the BiPAP he only gets headaches occasionally, so that's something.
I believe he has some other issue sapping his energy, and has had this other issue for years predating any apnea. However, he watched me go through numerous doctor visits over five years to get my diagnosis for being unreasonably easily fatigued (POTS), for which there aren't any good treatments (mainly coping strategies, and some things that take the edge off for some people), and decided he wasn't up for that. So whatever he has will remain mysterious.